Folktales

Parents~This week in Reading,  we focused on folktales and the central message or lesson being taught.  The students were also introduced to our Google Classroom which is a virtual classroom where the students can interact with links, videos, comments, and lots of other awesome technology based learning.  We watched a video all about folktales in our virtual classroom.  Check it out below.

It was a great introduction to folktales but in 2nd grade we want to dig deeper.  We started with the folktale Stellaluna which is a tale based on folktale The Ugly Duckling.  The students did an awesome job comparing and contrasting these 2 stories! 

 We will continue to work on folktales next week with the story of Stone Soup and the fall version Bone Soup!

SPELLING
Again, the class wanted their words on Friday so I gave them to them.  They made their study cards in class after we reviewed the spelling patterns.  The students have been practicing their words in shaving cream, playdough, dry erase, Chinese jump ropes, stamps, rainbow pencils, and tons more. 

 I would really like to add cornmeal tracing to our practice materials.  

*If you are interested in donating a container of cornmeal please shoot me an email.  

Flipping the Classroom with: Batty Wings
In science, we did a super fun experiment comparing our human hand to a bat's wing.  The experiment sheet went home on Thursday.  Thanks to all the parents that became students and learned all about our bat wings! 

MATH
This week in math, we continued to focus on problem solving with subtraction.  Students learned the CUBES strategy and continued to practice our CLOSE strategy. 

The students compared and contrasted both strategies.  Be sure to ask them which one works best for them.

Extra Practice-NOT Homework!
If you are looking for some extra at home practice you are welcome to click HERE.  These are similar to what we work on in class as a warm up each day.

Assessments!

Just so you know, it is close to the end of the quarter and I have begun my progress monitoring and assessing.  Students will take a writing assessment and a math assessment next week in preparation for our report cards that will go out on the 15th.  

Conferences

We are also getting ready for conferences and I can't wait to share how much your children have grown both academically and socially. 

 Click HERE to sign up!

*Don't forget to send in your PINK permission slip for our walking field trip in November!

Important Dates:
October 27th: Trunk or Treat 5:00-7:00
October 28th: Movie and Popcorn with third grade
($1.00 is needed to purchase popcorn and water.)

  

The Phonics Dance

Parents~I am sure you have started to hear some of our Phonics Dance at home so I wanted to take a minute and share a video of our Dance!

This is one of our favorite times of the day!  I introduce a different Phonics Dance Chunk every day or so and we work on the sound and spelling words with the chunk.  But, once we add it to our dance we must dance it every day.  I am already seeing students make the connection between the chunks and our reading and spelling activities. Plus, it is a great brain break for us too!  

SPELLING
I also wanted to give you a heads up!  We had a strange occurrence in class on Friday.  The students begged to get their spelling words early so that they could study more.  They are super excited about our Whiz Quiz!  We had 7 Word Wizards and several that were super close!  I am so impressed with their dedication to learning:)  

ECHOLOCATION
We had so much fun during our echolocation experiment.  You can check it out below. Our prey was a plastic spider ring!

MATH
This week in math, we focused on subtraction without regrouping.  The students continued to measure lengths in inches and CM in math.  Next week, we will continue to work on problem solving with addition and subtraction. 

Extra Practice-NOT Homework!
If you are looking for some extra at home practice you are welcome to click HERE to download several Drops in the Bucket pages and some fact fluency sheets.  These are similar to what we work on in class as a warm up each day.
READING 
In reading, we will be working on folktales and fairy tales.  We will work to understand the central message or lesson from the story.  
We will be reading the book, Stellaluna.  We will also be comparing this book to the story The Ugly Duckling that we read last week in our guided reading groups.  

We will also begin our Guided Reading Rotations on Monday.  Students will be working in guided reading groups based on their reading level. Students will move to different teacher's classrooms from 9:00-10:00 Monday-Thursday.  These groups are fluid so that as students progress in their reading comprehension and fluency they can rotate into groups to support their changing needs.  Students will also be working on reading and writing in class with me from 10:00-11:00 each day.  

Important Dates:
October 27th: Trunk or Treat 5:00-7:00
October 28th: Movie and Popcorn with third grade
($1.00 is needed to purchase popcorn and water.)

  

Problem Solving

This week in 2nd grade,  we focused on place value and problem solving. Students worked to solve double digit addition word problems by decomposing numbers. 

We used our problem solving bookmarks to get close with the problems.  Check out the video link below to learn more about our problem solving steps. Next week, we will add subtraction into the mix.  

This is a skill that we will work on throughout the year!

Please continue to work on fact fluency!

Math Playground is a great site for online fact fluency practice!

Next week in reading,  we will be jumping into the nonfiction world of bats in preparation for our Stellaluna book study!  Students will read several bat poems and nonficiton books in guided reading.  During our writing time, we will be working on a bat report!

We will even do some online research on Pebble Go!

We will be meeting 2 special bats that my classes have adopted in the past. Here is Lil Drac below and Boo2!  Both live at the Bat Sanctuary.  You can read more about their adopt a bat program by clicking the link above. 

          

The students also did a great job helping get our room ready for the weekend!  Check out our ZOO Keepers helping with Daisy's cage!  

Dates to Remember:
Early Release October 12th
Trunk or Treat October 27th 5-7:00
No School October 31st and November 1st

HOW CAN IT BE NOVEMBER ALREADY??

Candy Corn Science

Families~We had such a fun week experimenting with solids & liquids.  The class participated in Candy Corn Science.  We made safety goggles and reviewed science safety procedures.
The class investigated candy corn with their 5 senses and they participated in a sink or float exploration with candy corn, candy pumpkins, and chocolate kisses! (Thank you to all that send in donations to make these science experiments possible.)  A special thank you goes out to Gideon's family who cut out all of our safety goggles!!!  

Check them out below!

We have one more experiment coming up.  

The Case of the Fizzy Corn! 

In reading, we continued to work on finding details in our illustrations to support our thinking. Next week, we will work on how characters react to major events.   Our story, Where's my Mummy, will give us lots of opportunities to test out this comprehension skill.  It is a sweet tale about a mummy who is lost and looking for his mommy in a forest.  The students will also be working in their leveled guided reading groups on nonfiction books all about mummies.  We will focus on our nonfiction text features and how we can gain details about the text from them.

  Here is a video read of the story below!

The students will continue to work on writing narratives with some fun candy corn journal prompts in our writing center and we will add verbs to our grammar study this week.  

Be sure to check the back of your 2nd grader's MOOSE folder for their weekly spelling words.  We are on WEEK 6 for Spelling City.   We will continue to work on the Magic e pattern. 

Your 2nd grader will love WORD Unscramble this week on Spelling City!

Students should be practicing their spelling words nightly at home! 

In math, we will venture into the world of place value.  Students will work to compose and decompose numbers using standard form, number bonds, and expanded form.  

(We will continue to revisit measurement in our daily BUILD Centers.) 

Here is a tutorial all about decomposing numbers in base ten. 

Click below to check out a great site to practice composing numbers using base ten blocks. 

A BIG welcome to Logan Hart who joined our class on Friday!  We are looking forward to getting to know him and his family at 

Park View!

Dates to Remember

October 4th:  Chickfila Night from 5-8:00.

  October 5th: Students can shop at our book fair & PTO Meeting at 9:30 a.m.

October 7th: Fall Pictures & Book Orders Due

October 12: Early Release

Homework

So...we have a little homework now!  This week in 2nd grade, we talked a lot about responsibility and homework.  The students have visited our homework site on our classroom blog and are beginning to learn to navigate our MGSD digital resource page. There is also a kids link page on our blog that has several online sites for them to use for homework. 

Students have been assigned a 20 minute read and to study their spelling words.  I introduced them to a new site called Spelling City.  This site has all of our weekly spelling words and fun games to practice with.  You can check out the site by clicking below.

  

We will be on week 5 next week: Magic e with a & i. 

I will assign spelling words on the first day of the week.  

Below is our list for next week. 

Spelling week Unit 4

Spelling City Week 5

Magic e with a & i

shine, flake, write, grin, grade, mistake, trade, shin, wrap, while, quite, beside

DW: shade, slid, white, snake

Tricky Words: quiet, everyone  

WHIZ QUIZ

We took our FIRST Whiz Quiz ever TODAY!

The class did a wonderful job. I wanted to explain a bit about our WQ. It is very different from the traditional spelling test. Yes, the students will be asked to spell their spelling words from memory. Yes, they will write the dictated sentences.

BUT...with the Whiz Quiz, they will also need to spell Word Wall words correctly. (They are posted during the test.) I want them to learn to use their resources in the classroom. They will be asked to circle spelling patterns and chucks from our Phonics Dance. (To show proof of learning.) They may be asked about syllables, to identify vowels and consonants, or produce rhyming words. I may even throw in some math or science facts. The Whiz Quiz is more than a spelling test. The Whiz Quiz asks students to apply spelling, writing, reading, and many other skills studied in class that week.

*Please know that I give lots of hints on the Word Fun and Sentence/Definition parts of the quiz.

If a student gets all 25 questions correct on the quiz they will be a Word Wizard for the week. They will get a smelly sticker, a special stamp, and will sign our Word Wizard poster.

Check out our Word Wizard this week!

FALL FUN!

We have some really exciting learning activities planned including CANDY CORN Science!
It fits perfectly with our Matter Unit.
We are in need of the following supplies. Thank you so much to all that have already donated:)
You can grab most of this at the $ store!

40 clear plastic cups

3 bags of plastic eyeballs

3 bags of bat rings

3 bags of plastic frogs

1 bag of candy pumpkins

You can read more about our up and coming experiments by clicking the image below. 

In math, we will continue to work on measuring with inches, feet, and yards.  The students are even using centimeters and meters!  The class will interact with a variety of measuring centers next week and work to compare lengths. 

Dates to remember:
Early Release on 9/28
Book Fair Preview on 9/29
Book Fair Buying 10/10
*A picture form went home for Fall pictures on 10/7.

Illustration Investigation and Measurement

We had another successful week in 2nd grade! During our morning meeting time we really focused our our school wide behavior objective: 

BE RESPECTFUL

Here is an awesome video made by some students all about RESPECT.

This week in reading,  we focused on examining our illustrations to determine key details from a text.  We combined the details with the text and created inferences to understand the story!  This is such a tough skill for 2nd graders!  I am so very proud of how the class did with this.  Be sure to check out our hallway display!

Here is a link to a wordless text that we used this week to introduce the skill. 

We will continue to work with inferences next week as well.  
The students LOVED this story element rap we used to continue to get close with our texts. 
It also was an awesome reference for our narratives during our writing time in class. 

In math, we worked to use different tools to measure.  The students used inch rulers, tape measures and cubes. We also learned to compare lengths with centimeters.  

Next week in math, we will be working on estimating lengths and will end the week with a fun measure your body activity.

Homework:

Read for 20 minutes each night

Practice Spelling Words

Unit 1: Closed and Open Syllables e & o

we  to  melt  sled  plot  felt

west  got  clock  flop  shelf  shock 

Tricky Words: when where what

Sentences: 

Where is the shock shop?

What can we do to help you?

Don't forget that Tuesday, September 20th is our Curriculum Night.  

Cooperation

This week in 2nd grade,  we continued to get to know each other and our classroom.  The students were able to work in all of our literacy and math centers successfully!  I am about half way done with our reading assessments and will continue to work on these next week. 

Please know that students will not be placed into leveled groups until all assessments are complete. Once assessments are complete,  the students will be grouped based on levels.  They will meet each week in guided reading and math groups. 

In reading, We read The Crayon Box that Talks and the class did The Great Crayon Exchange to work on cooperation.  Students traded crayons in partner groups until they had the 9 required crayons.  They then followed directions to make a picture using all of the colors.  We continued to focus on answering Who, What, When, Where, and Why questions about a text.  

Here is a video read of the book your 2nd grader might enjoy at home!

Next week, we will be focusing on gaining details from the illustrations.  Students will be introduced to some basic inferences.   

HOMEWORK: Students should be reading for 20 minutes a night. You can read more about homework in 2nd grade here.  There is great site called Scholastic Book Wizard that will help you find books at your child's reading level.  I will send reading levels home as soon as assessments are done. 

2nd graders are working on spelling in their spelling sight word flip books.  Spelling lists will be differentiated once assessments are done. Your child will work on a list that is geared towards their spelling level.  The best part is these are just photo books from the $ Store and I use index cards inside.  

Students can write on the plastic with dry erase markers!

In math, we focused on addition and subtraction facts to 20.  Students glued an addition and a subtraction book into their math notebooks.  They rotated through centers and we started our math fact STICKER BOOKS!  

(We are in need of the foil star stickers from the $ Store if you are interested in helping out.)

Next, Monday is Patriot's Day! Please send your 2nd grader dressed in Red, White, and Blue!


Wednesday, September 14th is a half day of school. Teachers will be in professional development in the afternoon.  

Have a wonderful weekend!